A Dying Light in Corduba Read online

  There was still plenty to look at. She would have come up to my shoulder but was wearing cork heels on her natty hide hunting boots. Even her toenails were polished like alabaster. Her smooth, extremely dark skin was a marvel of depilatory care; she must have been plucked and pumiced all over - just thinking about it made me wince. Equal attention had been lavished on her paintwork: cheeks heightened with the purple bloom of powdered wine lees; eyebrows given super- definition as perfect semicircles half a digit thick; lids glowing with saffron; lashes smothered in lampblack. She wore an ivory bangle on one forearm and a silver snake on the other. The effect was purely professional. She was nobody's expensive mistress (no gemstones or filigree) and since women were not invited tonight, she was nobody's guest.

  She had to be a dancer. Her physique looked well fleshed but muscular. A shining swatch of hair, so black it had a deep blue sheen, was being held back from her brow in a simple twist which could be rapidly loosened for dramatic effect. She had both hands posed with a delicacy that spoke of practice with castanets.

  'My mistake,' I pretended to apologise. 'I had been promised a Spanish dancer. I was hoping you were a bad girl from Gades.'

  'Well, I'm a good girl from Hispalis,' she countered, trying to sweep past me. Her accent was crisp and her Latin abrasive. But for the Baetican theme of the evening it might have been hard to place her origins.

  Thanks to my trusty amphora I was keeping the doorway well blocked. If she squeezed through, we were going to be pleasantly intimate. I noted the look in her eye, suggesting that one wrong move in confined conditions and she was liable to bite my nose off.

  'I'm Falco.'

  'Well, get out of my way, Falco.'

  Either I had lost my charm, or she had sworn a vow to avoid handsome men with winsome smiles. Or could it be she was worried by my big jar of fermented fish entrails?

  An oldish man with a cithara stepped from a room across the corridor. His hair was grizzled and his handsome features had dark, Mauretanian colouring. He took no interest in me. The woman acknowledged his nod and turned after him. I decided to stop and watch their performance.

  'Sorry; private room!' she smirked, and closed the door smack in my face.

  'Absolute nonsense! The Baetican Society has never encouraged plotting in smoky corners. We don't allow private parties here -'

  It was Laeta. I had dallied too long and he had followed me. Overhearing the girl turned him into the worst kind of clerk who knows it all. I had stepped back to avoid getting my elegant Etruscan nose broken, but he pushed right past me intent on barging after her. His overbearing attitude almost

  made me decide against going in, but he had drawn me back into his orbit once more. The patient slaves wedged my amphora on its point against the doorframe and we sailed into the salon where the rude girl was to do her dance.

  As soon as my eyes wandered over the couches I realised that Laeta had lied to me. Instead of the high-class world governors he had led me to expect, this so-called select dining club admitted people I already knew - including two I would have crossed Rome on foot to avoid.

  They were reclining on adjacent couches - which was worrying in itself. The first was my girlfriend's brother Camillus Aelianus, a bad-mannered, bad-tempered youth who hated me. The other was Anacrites, the Chief Spy. Anacrites loathed me too - mainly because he knew I was better than him at the work we both did. His jealousy had nearly had lethal results, and now if I ever had the chance I would take great delight in tying him to a spit on the top of a lighthouse, then building a very large signal fire under him and setting light to it.

  Maybe I should have left. Out of sheer stubbornness I marched straight in after Laeta.

  Anacrites looked sick. Since we were supposed to be colleagues in state service he must have felt obliged to appear polite, so beckoned me to an empty place beside him. Instead of reclining myself I signalled the slaves to put my amphora to bed there with its neck on the elbow-bolster. Anacrites hated eccentricity. So did Helena's brother. On the next couch, the illustrious Camillus Aelianus was now simmering with fury.

  This was more like it. I grabbed a cup of wine from a helpful server, and cheered up dramatically. Then ignoring them both I crossed the room after Laeta, who was calling me to be introduced to someone else.

  III

  As I caught up with Laeta, I had to make my way through an odd roomful. I had hoped I would have no reason to take a professional interest tonight, but my suspicions of the Chief Secretary's motives in inviting me had kept me on the alert. Besides, it was automatic to size up the company. Whereas Laeta had first led me among a hardcore group 'of regular eaters and drinkers, these men seemed almost like strangers who had reclined together just because they spotted empty couches and were now stuck with making a night of it. I sensed some awkwardness.

  I could be wrong. Mistakes, in the world of informing, are a daily hazard.

  This salon had always been designed as a dining room - the black and white mosaic was plain beneath nine formal, matching, heavyweight couches, but boasted a more complex geometric design in the centre of the floor. Laeta and I were now crossing that square, where the low serving tables were currently set but the dancer would be performing in due course. We were approaching a man who occupied the pivotal position like some grand host. He looked as if he thought he was in charge of the whole room.

  - 'Falco, meet one of our keenest members - Quinctius Attractus!'

  I remembered the name. This was the man the others had complained about for bringing in a troupe of real Baeticans.

  He grunted, looking annoyed with Laeta for bothering him. He was a solid senator in his sixties, with heavy arms and fat fingers - just the right side of debauchery, but he obviously lived well. What was left of his hair was black and curly and his skin was weathered, as if he dung to old- fashioned habits: prowling his thousand-acre vineyards in person when he wanted to convince himself he stayed close to the land.

  Maybe his collateral lay in olive groves.

  I was clearly not obliged to make conversation, for the senator showed no interest in who I was; Laeta himself took the lead: 'Brought another of your little groups tonight?'

  'Seems an appropriate venue for entertaining my visitors!' sneered Quinctius. I agreed with the man in principle, but his manner was off-putting.

  'Let's hope they will benefit!' Laeta smiled, with the serene insolence of a bureaucrat making a nasty point.

  Not understanding the sniping, I managed to find amusement of my own. When I first came in Anacrites had been enjoying himself. Now when I looked back in his direction I could see he was lying straight and very still on his couch. His strange light grey eyes were veiled; his expression unreadable. From being a cheerful party guest with slicked-back hair and a meticulous tunic, he had become as tense as a virgin sneaking out to meet her first shepherd in a grove. My presence had really tightened his screw. And from the way he was staring - while pretending not to notice - I didn't think he liked Laeta talking to Quinctius Attractus like this.

  I quickly glanced around the three-sided group of couches. It was easy to spot the Baetican interlopers whose invasion had annoyed Laeta's colleagues. Several men here had a distinct Hispanic build, wide in the body and short in the leg. There were two each side of Quinctius, forming the central row in the most honoured position, and two more on the side row to his right. They all wore similar braid on their tunics, and dinner sandals with tough esparto rope soles. It was unclear how well they knew one another. They were speaking in Latin, which fitted the prosperous weave of their garments, but if they had come to Rome to sell oil they seemed rather restrained, not displaying the relaxed confidence that might charm retailers.

  'Why don't you introduce us to your Baetican friends?' Laeta was asking Quinctius. He looked as if he wanted to tell Laeta to take a one-way trip to the Underworld, but we were all supposed to be blood-brothers at this dinner, so he had to comply.

  The two visitors on the right-hand row
, introduced rapidly and rather dismissively as Cyzacus and Norbanus, had had their heads together in close conversation. Although they nodded to us, they were too far from us to start chatting. The nearer pair, those on the best-positioned couches beside Quinctius, had been silent while Laeta spoke to him; they overheard Laeta and the senator trying to outdo one another in urbane unpleasantness, although they hid their curiosity. An introduction to the Emperor's Chief Secretary seemed to impress them more than it had done the first two. Perhaps they thought Vespasian himself might now drop in to see if Laeta had tomorrow's public engagement list to hand.

  'Annaeus Maximus and Licinius Rufius.' Quinctius Attractus named them brusquely. He might be patron to this group, but his interest in them hardly took a paternal tone. However he did add more graciously, 'Two of the most important oil producers from Corduba.'

  Annaeus!' Laeta was in there at once. He was addressing the younger of the two, a wide-shouldered, competent- looking man of around fifty. '- Would that make you a relative of Seneca?'

  The Baetican assented with a head movement, but did not agree the connection with enthusiasm. That could be because Seneca, Nero's influential tutor, had ended his famous career with an enforced suicide after Nero grew tired of being influenced. Adolescent ingratitude at its most extreme.

  Laeta was too tactful to press the issue. Instead he turned to the other man. 'And what brings you to Rome, sir?'

  Not oil, apparently. 'I am introducing my young grandson to public life,' answered Licinius Rufius. He was a generation older than his companion, though still looked sharp as a military nail.

  'A tour of the Golden City!' Laeta was at his most insincere now, feigning admiration for this cosmopolitan initiative. I wanted to crawl under a side table and guffaw. 'What better

  start could he have? And is the lucky young man with us this evening?'

  'No; he's out on the town with a friend.' The Roman senator Quinctius interrupted with ill-concealed impatience. 'You'd best find a perch, Laeta; the musicians are tuning up. Some of us have paid for them, and we want our money's worth!'

  Laeta seemed satisfied that he had made his mark. He had certainly annoyed the senator. As we picked our way back across the room through the slaves who were lifting the food tables in order to clear a central space, Laeta muttered to me, 'Unbearable man! He throws his weight about to a degree that has become quite unacceptable. I may ask you, Falco, to help me with my endeavours to deal with him ...'

  He could ask as much as he liked. Keeping members of dining societies in order was not my work.

  My host had not yet finished bopping upstarts on the nob. 'Anacrites! And who amongst our refined membership has deserved your attentions?'

  'Yes, it's a working supper for me -' Anacrites had a light, cultured voice, about as unreliable as a dish of over-ripe figs. I felt bilious as soon as he spoke. 'I'm here to watch you, Laeta!' To do him justice, he had no fear of upsetting the secretariats. He also knew when to thrust his knife in quickly.

  Their warfare was pretty open: the legitimate administrator, who dealt in manipulation and guile, and the tyrant of the security forces, who used blackmail, bullying and secrecy. The same force drove them; both wanted to be the dunghill king. So far there was not much difference between the power of a well-honed damning report on first-quality papyrus from Laeta, and a snide denunciation whispered by the spy in the ear of the Emperor. But one day this conflict was bound to reach a head.

  'I'm quaking!' Laeta insulted Anacrites by using nothing worse than sarcasm. Do you know Didius Falco?'

  'Of course.'

  'He should do,' I growled. Now it was my turn to attack the spy: 'Anacrites may be disorganised, but even he rarely forgets occasions when he sends agents into hostile territory, then deliberately writes to let the local ruler know to look out for them. I owe this man a great deal, Laeta. But for my own ingenuity he might have had me tied out on a rock in the Nabataean desert for all the crows of Petra to pick clean my bones. And in the case of unwelcome visitors I don't believe the cruel Nabataeans bother to kill you first.'

  'Falco exaggerates,' Anacrites smirked. 'It was a regrettable accident.'

  'Or a tactical ploy,' I returned coolly.

  'If I was at fault, I apologise.'

  'Don't bother,' I told him. 'For one thing you're lying, and for another, it's a pleasure to continue hating your guts.'

  'Falco is a wonderful agent,' Anacrites said to Laeta. 'He knows almost everything there is to know about tricky foreign missions - and he learned it all from me.'

  'That's right,' I agreed mildly. 'Campania, two years ago. You taught me all the mistakes and bungles. All the ways to upset local sensitivities, trample the evidence and fail to come home with the goods. You showed me that - then I went out and did the job properly. The Emperor still thanks me for learning to avoid your mistakes that summer!'

  Laeta took a turn: 'I'm sure we all profit from your mutual past relationship!' He was letting Anacrites know I was working for him now. 'The entertainment is starting,' Laeta smiled in my direction. The general noise in the room had dropped in response to signs of impending action from the dancer. Laeta patted me on the shoulder - a gesture I found highly annoying, though I made sure Anacrites did not see me react. 'Stay and enjoy yourself, Falco; I'd like to hear your opinion in due course ...' It was obvious he was not talking about the musicians. He wanted Anacrites to think something was going on. Well, that suited me.

  Only two vacant couches remained, at each end of the side rows on opposite sides of the room. I had decided my preference, but just at that moment someone beat me to it. It was a man I found hard to place - a fellow in a subdued oatmeal tunic, about my age. He dropped on to the couch as if it had been his place previously and was soon leaning on his elbows to watch the dancer, with his muscular legs sprawled behind him. He had an old scar down one forearm and bunioned feet that had done their share of tramping pavements. He spoke to no one but appeared sociable enough as he tossed grapes into his mouth and grinned at the girl who was about to perform.

  I grabbed a wine refill to brace myself, then took the final couch - the one which was already partially occupied by my amphora of fish-pickle, alongside Anacrites.

  IV

  There were two musicians, both with that deep black North African skin. One played the cithara, fairly badly. The other was younger and with more menacing, slanted eyes; he had a hand drum. He pattered on it in a colourful manner while the girl from Hispalis prepared to thrill us with the traditional gypsy display. I gave Anacrites a pleasant smile that was bound to annoy him as we waited to marvel at the suppleness of her hips. 'Diana looks hot stuff. Have you seen her before?'

  'I don't believe so ... What's our Falco been up to then?' I hated people who addressed me in that whimsical way.

  'State secret.' I had just spent a winter delivering subpoenas for the lowest class of barrister and helping out as an unpaid porter at my father's auction house. Still, it was fun pretending that the Palace harboured a rival spy network, one run by Claudius Laeta over which Anacrites had no control.

  'Falco, if you're working for Laeta, my advice is watch your back!'

  I let him see me chuckle then I turned back to the dancer. She was giving us a few teasing poses with her golden bow and arrow: standing tiptoe on one foot with the other kicked up behind her while she pretended to shoot at diners, so she could lean back and show off her half-bared chest. Since this was Rome, it was nothing to cause a riot. Well, not unless any respectable equestrian went home and described her little Greek costume too graphically to his suspicious wife.

  'I've been talking to young Camillus.' Anacrites had leaned across to whisper in my ear. I made a violent scratching movement as if I thought a beetle had landed on me. I just missed blinding him. He popped back on to his couch.

  'Aelianus? That must have tried your patience,' I said. Just the other side of Anacrites Helena's angry brother was making sure he avoided my eye.

  'He see
ms a promising young character. It's clear that he doesn't care for you, Falco.'

  'He'll grow up.' The spy should have learned by now there was no future in baiting me.

  'Isn't he your brother-in-law or something?' It was casually offensive.

  'Or something,' I agreed calmly. 'What's he doing here? Don't tell me he heard there would be top men from the bureaucracy, and he's trying to worm his way into a sinecure?'

  'Well, he's just back from Baetica!' Anacrites loved being obscure.

  I loathed the thought of Helena's hostile brat of a brother hobnobbing here with the spy. Maybe I was getting overexcited, but the scenario had a whiff of plots being hatched against me.

  The girl from Hispalis was now well into her routine, so conversation ceased. She was showy, but not outstanding. Dancing girls are a thriving export from southern Spain; they all seem to train in the same terpsichoreal school, one where the movement-coach needs retiring. This wench could roll her eyes, and various other parts of her anatomy. She threw herself about the floor as if she wanted to polish the whole mosaic with her wildly swinging hair. Once you've seen one snappy lass bent over backwards with her clackers in a frazzle, the attention may start wandering.